Somewhat disappointingly, the number of cataloged posts that dealt directly with video game preservation was only around 2% of all posts. Nevertheless, because this paper is about users’ needs for how emulation is used to preserve video games, this is one of the most important supersets. Taken from post tags about video game
preservation and how video game preservation is made possible through emulation, this superset is a valuable guide into the mind of the average gamer and emulation user. This relative lack of interest in posting about video game preservation achieved through emulation could be from a variety of factors. It is possible that discussion about video game preservation was actually filtered out given my choice in searching on certain websites and subreddits. It is also possible that video game preservation was being discussed using other, less academic terminology. Finally, it is very possible that it is just not on people’s minds.
To that last point, anecdotally, video game preservation is often something that is discussed only in the wake of a large event that ripples throughout the gaming community - an event that forces people to discuss its implications. In August 2018, Nintendo sued the owner of two ROM file sharing sites for copyright infringement, which set off a wave of discussion about how ROMs are sometimes used as the only way to obtain certain games and play them (“All that’s wrong with Nintendo’s…”, 2018). In January 2019, Nintendo also closed the Wii Shop Channel, the online digital marketplace for the Wii console, preventing anyone from purchasing or downloading
the games that were exclusively available on that system (“12 years in…”, 2019). Besides these two events, however, it is entirely possible that video game preservation is still only being studied and discussed by academics, at a scale far more than it is being discussed in popular venues.
Despite any lack of enthusiasm, it is crucial that people take video game preservation seriously at a mass level. As the medium of video games ages, and as gaming audiences take note of this through nostalgic endeavors like microconsoles, there will be more pressure to preserve them as time goes by, just as there was with the growing medium of film in the early 20th century. For now, there are certain, specific threads in the collected data that I can use as points of discussion. Consoles aging, fading, and falling into disuse is noted in one Reddit thread, where the topic creator acknowledges that even the most popular consoles will eventually cease to be usable until there are none left. This is also known as general format obsolescence, often accompanied by bit rot that will eventually come to affect most technical equipment and current media formats (Monnens, 2009, p. 140-141). Oddly enough, this thought is resoundingly shut down, often condescendingly so:
Example 26
This is what I always say to people who get worried about disc rot. Your PS2/3 will die way before your discs go (Post 645)
Example 27
By the time that happens...Emulation. (Post 643)
These comments are poor ways of looking at issues of video game preservation, as if the buck will eventually be passed to some emulator developer who will magically fix everything. They also assume that those same developers will create flawless pieces of software that are successful beyond our wildest expectations. Most oddly, they also assume that every single piece of media will be recovered and preserved by some unknown entity and that emulators will be able to handle them perfectly.
A second thread on Reddit asked for examples of known games or systems that we have “failed” to preserve:
Example 28
What are some known games/systems that we have “failed” to preserve? (Post 1035)
This is an articulation I had expected to see more of - an acknowledgement that the video game industry, its players, and third-party nonprofits like libraries or archives have failed to preserve certain video game material. There are interesting examples offered - often digital games that were only available on console-exclusive
marketplaces (e.g., those found only in the Wii Shop Channel shutting down, as mentioned above). More unusual examples were proposed - mods for games and other material that was only available on websites like Megaupload, which was shut down in 2012; VHS-based consoles that don’t output a video signal to a television that is not cathode ray-based; multiplayer games that do not have private, fan-created servers; and web games hosted through fading technologies like Flash or Shockwave. This list is not altogether bad and warrants further academic research and discussion. One Quora thread asks if video game emulation is the best method there is to preserve video games, but the discussion then gravitates to debating the merits of emulation as opposed to porting or migration. This is a debate academics largely solved at the beginning of the decade, but the points made are the same: porting and migration are complicated, impractical, and cost effective. One commenter wisely notes that, as mentioned above, while emulation as a concept has been proven to work, emulation software is often created for free by developers who do not have access to the architecture of the original system, unless they put themselves under threat of possible lawsuits.
Related legal issues were also briefly acknowledged in these posts. One discussion targeted digital rights management (DRM) technology as a problem within the video game industry. Although DRM serves to protect copyright by often requiring greater forms of online authentication from the game’s purchaser, it complicates preservation efforts by doing so.
Example 29
It's far easier to preserve to stuff while it's still around. The only issue is copyright. (Post 1038)
Example 30
So DRM hinders preservation, not piracy. (Post 1039)
This is an interesting perspective on what usually prevents preservation from occurring. In the past, some academics have advocated for more legal loopholes allowing for libraries and archives to preserve games (Barwick, et al., 2011, p. 382, 385). Fewer directly attack DRM, and thus, copyright protection and industry profit in turn. However, various authors have fundamentally agreed with the sentiment, writing that DRM is an issue for game preservation and prevent community members from independently preserving video games themselves (McEniry & Cassidy, 2015, p. 11; Bachell & Barr, 2014, p. 155). DRM is often viewed as a net negative among gaming communities due to methods like always-online authentication, but it is interesting nonetheless that the gamers mentioned above arrived at the same conclusion as academics and archivists, albeit from a different direction.
One final thread I want to highlight also delved into topics that were far more sophisticated than many of the other posts I collected. Its creator argued that, in the critical judgment of important games, people remove them from their historical context, viewing them as isolated objects thanks to emulation and how they are curated in popular mediums (presumably in box sets or package deals). This is one point that video game archivist Frank Cifaldi has made in the past - arguing that video
game preservation is “more than just a playable binary of a game,” but also “everything surrounding a game: the people, the stories, the history [and] the ephemera” (Cifaldi, 2016).
Example 31
Most gamers don't, I think, care very much about historical importance. That's not relevant to them or their lives. And I think we get confused about what's historically important, because we're narcissistic enough to think that if we spent a bunch of time on a game and loved it at the time, that makes it Meaningful…I suspect that, over the long haul, whether a game remains fun will become the definition of whether it's historically important. These were the games that got it right, and that's what makes them important. (Post 939) Example 32
Historical context of games does not need to be linked to how good a game is. The wizardry game are iconic as being being the inspiration for RPGs,
however, few play the original because they have control terribly. (Post 943) These commenters debated the point of media curation as it relates to video games, as archivists and librarians often do in selecting and appraising media for their own institutions’ collections - whether the most appropriate choice for appraisal and curation of video games is to leave the best or most memorable ones, or to look for the most historically important games regardless of quality. This belongs in a deeper discussion than can be written here, but it is an important one that is worth having.
Takeaways:
• Users often only discuss video game preservation in the aftermath of an event that forces preservation into public consciousness.
• Users are aware of general format obsolescence.
• Users are aware there has been a lack of past video game preservation. • Users have targeted digital rights management (DRM) as an obstacle in
the way of video game preservation.
• Users are curious about how video games will be historically viewed as other artforms are.